More than 80% of countries have failed to submit plans to meet a UN agreement to halt the destruction of Earth’s ecosystems, new analysis has found.
Nearly two years ago, the world struck a once-in-a-decade deal in Montreal, Canada, that included targets to protect 30% of land and sea for nature, reform billions of dollars on environmentally harmful subsidies and slash pesticide usage. Countries committed to submit their plans for meeting the agreement before the biodiversity Cop16 in Cali, Colombia, which begins this month – but only 25 countries have done so.
The other 170 countries have failed to meet the deadline. The world has never yet met a single target set in the history of UN biodiversity agreements, and there had been a major push to make sure this decade was different.
What is Cop16?
From 21 October until 1 November, governments will meet in Cali, Colombia, for a summit on the state of biodiversity and nature. Representatives of almost 200 countries will negotiate over how to protect the planet from mass extinctions and ecosystem breakdown. The gathering is formally known as the 16th conference of the parties of the UN convention on biological diversity – shortened to Cop16. It will be the first time countries have met since they formed a landmark nature-protection deal at Cop15 in Montreal, Canada, in December 2022.
What will they be negotiating over?
In Montreal, countries agreed a landmark deal to save nature. Cop16 will be about whether they are putting that into practice. The main focus will be on progress on 23 biodiversity targets for this decade. They include a high-profile goal to protect 30% of the Earth for nature by the end of the decade, restore 30% of the planet's most degraded ecosystems and reform some of the economic drivers of the loss. Countries will also be discussing how to fund these protections.
What is at stake?
Nature is in crisis: global wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 73% in 50 years, according to a scientific assessment made in October 2024. The biodiversity crisis is not just about other species – humans also rely on the natural world for food, clean water and air to breathe. On the eve of Cop16, land restoration expert Tonthoza Uganja said: 'We are on the precipice of shattering Earth’s natural limits – we have not gone there yet, but we are right on the edge.'
Analysis by Carbon Brief and the Guardian shows that some of the most important ecosystems on the planet are not covered by National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs).
Only five of the 17 megadiverse countries, home to about 70% of the world’s biodiversity, produced NBSAPs: Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mexico. Suriname was the only Amazon rainforest nation to submit a plan, and no Congo basin nations had produced NBSAPs by the deadline. Canada, Italy, France and Japan were the only G7 nations to meet the deadline. The UK has submitted a technical document to the UN convention on biological diversity but is not expected to publish its plan until the beginning of 2025, citing the change of government.
Crystal Davis, global director for the Food, Land and Water Program at the World Resources Institute, said: “Nature is facing a crisis, largely driven by humanity’s use of the land and ocean … at Cop16, it’s time for all countries to step up and turn a landmark global agreement to protect and restore nature into action.”
Colombia, despite hosting the summit, also failed to meet the deadline, but said it would present its plan during the meeting. Brazil, which failed to meet the deadline, said it was formulating a plan that would last until the middle of the century and had been delayed due to the scale of what it was trying to achieve. Other countries are expected to present NBSAPs at Cop16 but it was unclear how many would be unveiled, the UN said.
“More NBSAPs would be better, that’s clear,” said UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker. “We expect more to be announced at Cop16 – including some of the big ones like India, who want to have the ministerial announcement at Cop16 and give it a lot of profile.
“We are confident that by the end of the year, there will be quite a few more. We understand that when they are late, countries had to get funding first. Very often that’s because they are trying to do the whole-of-society approach. That takes time.”
Braulio Dias, director of biodiversity conservation at the Brazilian ministry of environment who is responsible for the NBSAP process, said he expected his country would publish a plan in early 2025.
“We are working on a new NBSAP extending till 2050. Brazil is a huge country with the largest share of biodiversity, with a large population with a complex governance,” he said.
Dr V Rajagopalan, chair of India’s working group tasked with reviewing the country’s national biodiversity plan, told Carbon Brief that the goals of the global nature deal must be adapted to local contexts.
“Our situation is different from the west: what can be done there, cannot be done here,” he said. “For example, subsidies are a challenge for us – similarly, pesticides – because of our agricultural status and food security requirements. But, still, we have kept our targets very ambitious.”
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features
